Hub 55 aims to turn its namesake into a destination (with photo gallery)

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Siblings Natasha Pogrebinsky, left, and Alex Pogrebinsky stand in the future dining room of the Lake Shore Bank building on the corner of East 55th Street and St. Clair Avenue that will soon be renovated into a restaurant, distillery and offices. Built as a bank, the building later served as a library and a community center.

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Tim Harrison for Crain’s

The Lake Shore Bank building on the corner of East 55th Street and St. Clair Avenue will soon be renovated into a restaurant, distillery and offices. Built as a bank, the building later served as a library and a community center.

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The exterior of Goldhorn Brewery on East 55th Street in Cleveland. Goldhorn opened last year and is part of the Hub 55 complex.

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Tim Harrison for Crain’s

The bright dining room of Cafe 55 is part of a larger Hub 55 project.

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Tim Harrison for Crain’s

Also slated for adaptation under the Hub 55 umbrella is Sterle’s on East 55th Street. Sterle’s has closed as a daily restaurant, and will now be used as an event center.

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Brewer Joel Warger moves a keg in one of the coolers at Goldhorn Brewery in Cleveland.

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Tim Harrison for Crain’s

Towering Ionic columns of the Lake Shore Bank building. Built as a bank, the building later served as a library and a community center.

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Tim Harrison for Crain’s

Ornately carved risers on the stairs of the Lake Shore Bank building on the corner of East 55th Street and St. Clair Avenue that will soon be renovated into a restaurant, distillery and offices.

"They don't make 'em like this anymore," Alex Pogrebinsky said as he walked into a defunct, 112-year-old bank building on East 55th Street and St. Clair Avenue one afternoon in August. Above him were vaulted ceilings with electrical wires jutting out; around him, lime-green walls fronted by neoclassical yellow columns.

"Cleveland has a history of taking down old buildings," he added. "This? It would be a crime. Instead, we're going to restore this baby to its former glory."

Pogrebinsky, the 34-year-old general manager at East Side eatery-complex Hub 55, is referring to the latest phase of expansion for him and owner Rick Semersky's business venture. Since March 2015, Hub 55 gradually has become what Pogrebinsky dubs an "island in a desert," a singular refuge for beer lovers in a neighborhood formerly untouched by the big-brewery concept. With Hub 55's coming-of-age moment — a slivovitz and vodka distillery, a "New European" restaurant and a grocery store — come November, Pogrebinsky and crew hope the area will become a beacon for like-minded followers.

The Hub 55 complex is growing despite its surrounding setbacks: high crime, over 400 vacant homes and 48% of the residents in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood living below the poverty line. Four people in the vicinity having been shot, including an 8-year-old boy, since May alone, according to media reports. Which begs the question: Can Hub 55 attract the clientele it wants?

"Sure, it's gotten a bad reputation because of its people, because of the economy, because of people investing in other locations," Pogrebinksy said. "Bad neighborhoods are usually bad for those entrenched in that sort of life. But for most people? It's just their neighborhood."

East 55th's great barrier grief

Before the 1980s, the St. Clair neighborhood surrounding the corner where Hub 55's brewery churns its hops was primarily home to a swath of Slovenian and other Eastern European immigrants and their descendants. They opened banks, restaurants and funeral homes — some that are still in operation today, including Sterle's Country House, a 60-year-old Slovenian restaurant turned recently into an event center, which Semersky has owned since 2011.

"Few people also know," Semersky said, "that this used to be the mecca of breweries in Cleveland."

Semersky looked to his own Slovenian roots — his grandmother grew up a few blocks away — and opened Goldhorn Brewery in 2016 with a conscious understanding of how to ease into the market: Don't sell beer at Ohio City prices (all pilsners and IPAs are $5 to $6 a glass at Goldhorn), but keep products hearty, a philosophy that will stem into Hub 55's grocery store and its made-to-drink liquors. In July, he hired Pogrebinsky and his sister, Natasha, two former owners of a Russian restaurant in Queens, N.Y., to bolster Hub 55's mission. Pogrebinsky, who has taken many politicians and CDC reps on tours of Hub 55 since his start, is smitten with its progress.

"I can see this being one of the major destinations in Cleveland," he said, walking around the bank's foyer, a soon-to-be spacious dining area. "I want people to come here and spend their entire day. And for the neighborhood, too. I'm talking jobs and taxes."

With an institution so fertile for St. Clair, newcomers driving up East 55th may wonder why any recent infrastructural improvement here is lacking, solely at the whims of Semersky. Walkable may be the last word used to describe it.

Michael Fleming, executive director of the St. Clair Superior Development Corp., believes East 55th's progress itself stems from a physical design flaw — not enough foot traffic and not enough wealth in the environs to support it. For Hub 55 to rightfully succeed, he said, it would require a boost from street modifications itself: added crosswalks, accessible parking, bike lanes. A study Fleming orchestrated earlier this year affirmed that the neighborhood surrounding Hub 55 alone couldn't sustain it.

"An architect once told me, 'If you want a walkable street, design a road your grandmother could cross,'" he said. Fleming turned to the Midway Project, which hopes to ultimately turn thoroughfares in Cleveland into pretty four-lane boulevards with dedicated bike lanes, and added, "I think the city's intention is to create some magic. And if East 55th had a Midway, too? Who knows."

But if 55th demands a facelift to draw in outsiders, then it must prove its worth to a number of parties. For one, East 55th is a barrier between two East Side wards — 7 and 10 — spearheaded by two councilmen, T.J. Dow and Jeffrey Johnson, respectfully, who historically have had different agendas when it comes to the street as a whole. For Johnson, preserving the bank building as a historic landmark was key to his policy; for Dow, Hough to the east demands more of his attention. (Dow couldn't be reached by Crain's by deadline.)

Although Johnson says the two are "not in conflict" over the street they share, it's inevitable that any grand renovation to East 55th — a Midway-style streetscape, for example — would require a three-pronged handshake among them and Fleming, now that Hub 55 has stretched its legs into both wards. But for any major infrastructure improvements, Johnson asserts that City Hall must begin paying attention to an overlooked — and, he said, underfunded — part of the East Side.

"Maybe if our neighborhood was named 'Ohio City'?" Johnson said. "But hey, even Tremont looked like (East 55th) initially. There were prostitutes. There was crime. The Beachland Ballroom in Waterloo was an 'island'. The question is how to solidify what's going on now."

A destination for all

As November's election season slides into the fore, Semersky and the Pogrebinskys are prepping for their biggest year ever. Alex Pogrebinsky is putting the finishing touches on Hub 55's still-unnamed 3,500-square-foot lounge, while Natasha Pogrebinsky composes the restaurant's New European menu: a melange of French, Russian and Polish.

"Why not be adventurous?" she said. "A burger or a schnitzel — I mean, why not? I don't like to underestimate this neighborhood."

Regarding surrounding residents themselves, Hub 55 is seen as a step in the right direction, not trite gentrification, especially alongside Saint Martin de Porres High School's $26.5 million renovation (phase one will be done in January). Despite Goldhorn's "island" status, and unpredictable future, longtime business folk are piqued.

"I've seen this place when it's up; I've seen this place when it's down," said Mike Hutchins, a 60-year-old owner of miscellaneous wares shop Second 2 Home on St. Clair Avenue and East 61st Street. "And I know we need something to draw the people in. I mean, we could use a developer, like University Circle. And it'd be nice to have a Marc's."

Hutchins, who was one of the first African-Americans to open up shop on St. Clair in 1985, said the neighborhood's crime has never been a deterrent for him or any of his fellow shop owners (teenagers once broke into his store, stole TVs). And neither, he said, should it be for Hub 55 patrons.

"There's crime everywhere," he said. "Why should that be keeping me from getting something to eat?"

As far as converting East 55th into a streetscape of sorts, Alex Pogrebinsky himself isn't thinking too far down the road. He's sold on the premise that Hub 55's authenticity — its pastured eggs, its house-made whiskey and "simple" Russia-influenced foods — will alone foster the block as a destination despite any overarching political tug-of-war or crime statistics.

An island, he hopes, that can grow into an archipelago.

"It's not that we wanted to create a fortress," he said of Hub 55's birth. "To have a streetscape, that's one of our goals. Really, location is specific for us. I mean, if we wanted to do this somewhere else in Cleveland, then we would have done it."

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